Chapter Three Hundred and Sixteen. R-Day.

Chapter Three Hundred and Sixteen. R-Day.

Bob woke up to darkness. The entire group had agreed that no one wanted to run that Dungeon again, so they'd headed home. The hours spent in the Dungeon, plus the trip home had put everyone at close to twenty-four hours on the hoof. Bob had hoped that exhaustion would have allowed him to sleep until dawn, but dawn was still a couple of hours away.

He found Mike relaxing in a chair, a cup of coffee in his hand as he looked up at the stars.

"Morning," Bob greeted the former detective quietly, pushing his mana into the pattern for a persistent effect wrapped summon mana-infused object spell.

"Thirty-three hour days are hard to get used to," Mike grumbled, then shook his head. "Not as hard as they should be though. Something I've noticed is that now that I'm a real tier six, or mostly, I'm somehow more than I was before. Beyond the increased size and being young again." He shook his head again. "We haven't had meeting, but I've talked to everyone, and they feel it too."

"From what I understand, that's to be expected," Bob replied. "It's one of the reasons I've spent so much time using that 'Return to the Beginning' blessing. I didn't like feeling like I was better than the people around me."

Mike snorted. "I get it now. Before, I couldn't understand why you were playing at a handicap, but I get it now." He sighed. "It makes me wonder what we'll be like at tier eight? Or hell, tier ten? How disconnected from humanity will we be?"

"I think that the reason the King of Greenwold spends his time in a lower tier form is to keep in touch with his kingdom," Bob said. "The same thing with Yorrick, who I'm pretty sure is a demon of some sort. They deliberately weaken themselves so they don't lose sight of the people they've taken responsibility for."This chapter is updated by nov(e)(l)biin.com

"You know what today is, right?" Jessica's voice was quiet as she pulled a folding chair out of her inventory and sat down next to Bob.

"Yeah," Bob nodded.

"How bad do you think it'll be?" She asked.

"I'm going to say that big cities, especially coastal cities, are going to be rubble," Bob replied.

"Rural areas should be better," Mike added. "The thing with cities like New York is that they've got what, eight million people packed into three hundred square miles? When everything gets knocked down, you've got eight million people trying to occupy that space. Out in the country, you knock down all the buildings within three hundred square miles, and its both easier to clean up, and you don't have people stacked on top of each other."

"They're not going to be able to move everyone back at once though, yeah? The PM said it'd probably take half again as long as to get everyone back as it did to get them away," Jessica shook her head.

"I have to keep reminding myself that it's not my problem," Bob admitted. "There's a part of me that wants to load up the Freedom and hop back over to help."

Jessica leaned over and gently tapped his nose with her finger. "Bad Bob," she admonished, "the governments of the world have their plans in place to handle the return."

"I'd like to think that I'm as civic minded as the next guy," Mike added, "but she's right. Let the people who were paid to do the job, do the job. We've got our own troubles."

"Why is it still dark out? Why am I awake?" Amanda complained quietly, summoning a loveseat with summon mana-infused object, and curling up next to Dave when he sat down.

"Because you already slept for eight hours, and if you sleep any longer, you'll be out of sorts," Dave replied gently.

"When it comes to mornings, she's never been super keen," Jessica whispered loudly.

"Shut up, too early," Amanda groaned. "Coffee?"

"How do you not keep coffee in your inventory?" Mike asked, pulling out a black and decker coffee maker and a power station. He plugged in the coffee maker, and poured a pot full of water down the back.

"No space," she grunted then tilted her head, lifting her face away from Dave's shoulder as the smell of freshly brewing coffee reached her.

"How can you not have space?" Mike asked.

Yorrick leaned against the crenelations of the tower and looked out over the city with a smile.

It wasn't large when compared to Karce, barely more than ten square miles, but it was built with the combined experience of the Karcerian Empire, and the depth of knowledge offered by Earth and some of its finest civil engineers.

The walls soared a hundred feet into the sky, and although it wasn't visible, were sunk two hundred feet into the soil, resting on bedrock. They offered protection from the worst that a tide could throw against them.

The boulevards that ran in neat, even lines from the wall to the tower in the center were broader than he'd expected, but the city planners had shown him the math for how much space was needed for a given number of people to travel the streets without crowding each other to the degree that it slowed everyone else down.

They'd then recalculated those numbers when he asked about higher tier individuals. The boulevards were now separated into eight separate lanes, four going in either direction. The first, and smallest, was for tier five humans. The second, slightly wider, was for tier six individuals, then another for tier seven. The final lane was equal to the previous three combined, and was meant for groups and vehicles. Each was separated by a narrow strip of soil, which they'd called a median, where shade trees had been grown.

The buildings, which reached slightly above the walls, all sported tall columns of green, verticle planters, spaced to ensure that they didn't present a solid wall and maximizing the sunlight received by each. The construction crews had actually been complaining about the fruit and vegetables that they'd had to clean up.

In retrospect, they could have held off growing those until today, a mistake they hadn't made with the other six sister cities.

Yorrick could see people rushing down the boulevards now, looking the maps in their hands that also held their housing assignments. The city had been designed to hold five hundred thousand people, but it would begin with one percent of that.

He knew that Kar'Noct would fill up quickly as Earth's refugees returned to find their world changed. They would gather to take shelter under the Empire's blackened wings, and Yorrick's Aegis.

He couldn't help but laugh. "Mor'Noctum bless you, Bob, wherever you are," he pulled a flask from his belt and saluted the sky before taking a long drink. He'd never imagined that he'd see the day when the Empire was finally free of the threat posed by Parceus. In the end it had all come down to one man and his determination to rescue his cat.

Queen Elizabeth shook her head as she looked at what was left of London.

"Well, I suppose this affords us the opportunity to repair the streets," Charles murmured from her side.

She fought back a smile. Charles had always been able to lift her spirits.

The only thing standing more than a single story in height were the piles of rubble.

"We will have our vanguard attend to the museums and libraries immediately," she decided. "We must rescue what can be salvaged, with the knowledge that anything damaged after the System integration can be returned to it's state at that time with a repair ritual. Once we've saved our heritage, we can begin repairing homes and buildings."

"I don't suppose we can accidently fail to complete the ritual for the Walkie Talkie?" Charles asked.

Elizabeth didn't suppress her smile this time.

Thidwell shook his head. "We shouldn't be sending anyone to Glacier Valley," he rumbled. "Holmstead is thriving, but it's doing so because of our people and our infrastructure. Glacier Valley has a degree of infrastructure as well, but lacks the human resources we've cultivated. If we need more housing, then let's build more housing."

Kelli nodded, tapping his tablet.

"The Adventurers Academy is doing well, those 'virtual lectures' Bob recorded for us are drawing freshers in, and they're sticking around," Kelli reported. "Casualties in the Dungeon are below one percent for graduates of the Academy."

"It looks like we are going to lose less than a hundred people back to Earth," Kelli continued. "We have almost a thousand that plan to visit, but they've declared that this is there home now."

"Any word from Bob?" Thidwell asked.

"No," Kelli shook his head. "He and his friends are still missing."